Glacier, Iceland 2016. © Ragnar Axelsson Kötlujökull, courtesy the artist and Qerndu, Reykjavik

Text: Eloise King-Clements

A mother in Ukraine finds crumbs of normalcy, a garden becomes a metaphor for collective consciousness, the ice in Greenland is “sick,” pinpricks of light illuminate trauma, black youth play in the summer as they shed innocence and learn social codes, are just a few of the stories behind the photographers shortlisted for the annual Prix Pictet prize. The prize—created in 2007 to spotlight work tied to global environmental issues, and now in its 10th year—has released their shortlist of the 12 photographers for this year's theme, Human. All 12 of the artist's works will be published in a book, but one, announced in September, will receive the prestigious prize of 100,000 CHF (around 112,000 USD). As the award was conceived to honor global issues of sustainability, this year's shortlist tells the complex, and often fraught, relationship of humans to their land, as technological triumphs come at a price. The executive director of Prix Pictet, Isabelle von Ribbentrop urges, “we stand on the threshold of the future wondering which way the dice will fall,” and concluding with hope that, “human ingenuity, intelligence, and resilience of spirit is powerful enough to insist upon a very different future for the human story.”

Lila 2022 © Siân Davey, image courtesy of Siân Davey

Left: Fragment of a Fresco from Saint Sophia Cathedral (11th Century), Kyiv Right: Hand of My Son Mykhail, Vyhraiv Village, Cherkasy Oblast 2022 © Gera Artemova, image courtesy of Gera Artemova.

The sweeping theme, Human, suggests a fleshy array of photographs, but the finalists display the state of affairs, that is, the immense hardship and obstinance of human spirit today. Gera Artemova’s series War Diary is a series of diptychs that tell her experience of evacuating Kyiv last year: as the Russian invasion raged in February, Artemova was displaced to the village of Vyhraiv, only to return a few months later to a city in the throes of war. One poignant diptych pictures, to the right, a fragment of a mural depicting hands in prayer from Saint Sophia Cathedral. The sense of protection a church offers seeps into the understanding of the adjacent photo—her son’s hand grazing a leaf in the village—as she hopes to protect her child and shield him from the danger. She reflects on the series, “War Diary is also about the value of life and striving to find crumbs of normality in absolutely abnormal circumstances.”

Hamlet Devastated, 2022. ©Federico Ríos Escobar, image courtesy of Federico Ríos Escobar.

A photographer travels to the Darién Gap, a location of crisis that connects Centraland South America, that in recent years “has become a human traffic jam, a wave of people pushed from their homes by pandemic-battered economies, climate change, and conflict,” in hopes of entering the United States. Federico Ríos Escobar’s Paths of Desperate Hope documents the trek through the lethal land. Men in despair, children supporting their parents and a dead body caked in insects; despite the tragedies, Ríos Escobar recalls, “we witnessed countless acts of kindness: people putting out a hand to help a stranger escape a fast-moving current, or breaking off pieces of papelón, the brown sugar blocks they carried, to share with fellow trekkers. Everyone knew that, somehow, they had to keep going. I’ll never know how many of those we met made it — and how many didn’t.”

The tenth laureate will be announced during the opening of the award exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in September of this year.